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A Valve patent filing showing a modular controller design

With the unveiling of SteamOS -- a forked distribution of Linux dedicated to running the Steam platform in the living room -- a vocal majority online is expecting Valve to follow up with the announcement of their own, branded "Steam Box" hardware. It's not happening, it never will, and here's why.

Prior to today's announcement, it felt like every media outlet on earth was publishing articles with headlines like "Valve to unveil Steam Box on Monday!" I'm aware that Valve has two remaining announcements this week, but a Steam Box isn't one of them.

The initial proof is right there in Valve's introductory paragraph to SteamOS: "As we’ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we’ve come to the conclusion that the environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself."

In terms of pushing Steam into the living room, Big Picture Mode was a tentative foot in the door, and SteamOS is a much more confident step. But it's enthusiasts, boutique PC builders, and OEMs who will propel gamers through that door, not Valve themselves.

Linux is open source software, and Valve is billing SteamOS as a "cooperating system." On their blog, Valve reiterates that designing hardware is not their long game: "With SteamOS, 'openness' means that the hardware industry can iterate in the living room at a much faster pace than they’ve been able to."

What pace are they referring to? Well, we've seen a proliferation of small form factor gaming PCs such as the Tiki from Falcon Northwest and the Piston from Xi3. A dozen different case manufacturers are pushing new mini-ITX enclosures. But simply plugging a smaller computer into your TV is far from an elegant solution.

Putting a free operating system into the hands of creative hardware manufacturers and system integrators that focuses on Family Sharing, in-home streaming, and is explicitly designed from the ground up for use on a big screen? That's a different animal entirely.

Valve's platform and primary source of revenue is digital distribution. Even their own game franchises like Portal and Left 4 Dead are secondary. It's in their best interest to enable developers to sell more games, and hardware makers to sell more hardware to play those games on.

Gabe Newell and company are staunch Linux advocates, and you can be assured that they've been hunkered down developing middleware and tools to aid publishers and developers in bringing their titles to Linux -- and in turn SteamOS.

Right now SteamOS is dependent on Windows to stream a user's entire Steam library to a so-called "Steam Box." But mark my words: Valve's long game is to erase Windows from the PC gaming equation entirely. To that end, it's in their best interest to open up their toolbox to partners, not to create a closed ecosystem or hardware environment with their own branded box.

I'm willing to posit that yes, Valve has developed their own Steam Box -- as a reference design only. This is common practice in the industry, and we've already seen it from companies like AMD and as blueprints for integrating chipsets like Tegra 4 and APUs.

Everyone has also forgotten that Valve laid off a significant portion of their hardware design team earlier this year -- probably because said reference design was near completion.